(Unmodified, wait a minute)

'Boom, ......boom, boom, click,' the thunder suddenly exploded in the sky, and the bursting lightning instantly illuminated the heavens and the earth. Soon after the lightning and thunder, the rain poured down. The dullness that had been silting up since noon was swept away by this time, and they all fell to the ground with the rain and disappeared into the interconnecting ditches at the bottom of the city.

The world was originally a six-game chess game, and Xiong Jing, as one of the chess players, had to consider the reactions of the rest of the parties every step he made. Now that the whole world is about to become a six-game chess deck, Xiong Jing should be even more careful about this. It is a pity that Xiong Jing is not a good chess player, and from the beginning of his accession to the throne, he recklessly ignored the reactions of various countries, especially the Qin State, causing the Qin State to attack again and again. He only has his own goal in mind, and he only wants to accomplish him. If he doesn't, then he will fall into deep chagrin.

He has been a little annoyed for the past month, not in China, but abroad. The Blue Ocean Fleet departed in May last year, and the fleet could reach the American continent around November of that year, and according to the previous agreement, after the fleet arrived on the American continent, it searched for sweet potatoes as much as possible, and then returned in February of the following year.

Of course, it doesn't mean that you have to be stuck in February, it can be March, April, May, ......, in fact, any month of the year you can depart from North America and ride the trade winds back to Asia. This is the trade wind belt, which means that the wind exists all year round, but before September (Western calendar) the trade winds are close to the equator, after September the trade winds will move north about ten degrees of latitude, and then return to the equator in March of the following year.

Although the trade winds can be navigated throughout the year, it is very dangerous to cross the South Pacific in June, July and August, and the Spaniards must travel north by the southwest monsoon in order to complete the round trip in a year, and then cross the North Pacific in the hot months of June, July, August, September and October.

Since May this year, coastal countries and lighthouses have begun to pay attention to the ships of the Blue Ocean Fleet returning from North America, but until nearly September, no sea boats have been found returning from the east along the coast. In addition, when a Suzaku-class flying clipper ship that went to the east coast of the Philippines to search for the Blue Ocean Fleet returned to Minyue, it was wrecked in the Yizhou (Taiwan) Strait.

When the northeast monsoon and southwest monsoon prevail, the wind strength here is above level 6, and in many cases it is above level 11 or 12. It is common to encounter storms at sea, but the hull breaks after a storm, which is the problem of shipbuilders and designers.

"How many people did Min Yue rescue?" When the downpour fell, Xiong Jing sighed softly.

"Your Majesty, Bai Rifei rescued thirteen people." Gong Yin Dao, Gong Yijian, and the generals of the boat division, Hong Zhu and Ou Zhe, are all there. Hearing that only thirteen people survived, Gong Yijian closed his eyes.

"The rest are dead?" Xiong Jing's brows furrowed even tighter, the Pelican is the second Suzaku class flying shear, with a displacement of more than 200 tons and a crew of more than 60 people, and now only thirteen people have been rescued, and the rest seem to be dead.

Xiong Jing's question went unanswered. If no miracle happens, the rest of the people are probably all dead.

"The boat broke in a hurricane, and this is not a mistake in design." Xiong Jing unconsciously said this.

"My lord, there are many wrecks in the strait, and the Pelican happened to be hit by a hurricane, so the boat was destroyed and people died." Outuo is a Yue person, and the Yizhou Strait is a very dangerous place. In order to pursue speed, the Suzaku class boat body is long and narrow, the blowing water is also very shallow, and the mast is extremely high. The ratio of the length of the mast is generally two to three, but the ratio of the length of the Suzaku mast to the length of the boat is four to five.

"The king blames himself." Hongmu also persuaded. "More than a dozen sea boats have been launched, and there has never been a wrecked boat, and the Pelican has only lost one in ten thousand."

"No, it's not a shame." Xiong Jing is still blaming himself. Compared with a sail frigate like the Glutton, the clipper structure is already thin, and the hull is slender and not strong. The most important thing is that he only made half of the clipper model and then put down because of the work, and he did not understand the structure of the clipper ship.

"How many Suzaku-class ships are there in the dock?" In line with the idea of making up for the dead, Xiong Jing asked about the follow-up.

"For every ten Gluttonous ships, there will be one Suzaku class, and next year there will be 30 Glutton-class ships, so three of them will lay keels." The public loses the barge. September is the day when the sea boats are launched on a large scale, and it is also the day when the keels of the new ships are laid.

"It's all changed to gluttony." Xiong Jing Road. The Suzaku class and the gluttonous class are the same keel, and it is not difficult to modify them.

"Yui." Gong Zhijian agreed. The Pelican wrecked, in his opinion, the shipyard is the most responsible, and the ship was built by the shipyard.

"The Suzaku, the Eagle (), and the Wren are forbidden to go to sea after returning to sea." The Vermilion Bird class is named after the sacred bird, the Vermilion Bird went to the Americas last year, the Eagle and the Wren were launched in August last year, and after the Wax Festival in December, they went west with the Red Ocean Fleet again, and it is no accident that they are now estimated to be on the way back to Panyugang.

"鵷鶵号 (ú), 鸀鳿 (zhǔ.yù), 鷫鷞号 (āng)" These are the three Suzaku class ships that were just launched last month, Xiong Jing paused here, and still said: "Three sea boats are forbidden to go to sea." ”

"The king...... "Ou Tuo didn't expect Xiong Jing to stop all the Vermilion Bird classes." If you can't go to sea, where will Xizhou go? Moreover, the king once said that the goods were transported to Xizhou in the Suzaku class, and the gold and silver were returned to India, and then corn was purchased in India, and the gluttonous class was transported back to Dachu. Today, the Suzaku class cannot go to sea, what about trade? ”

The trading system is actually the distribution system. According to the different price needs of each region, the price and transportation system are formulated separately. Silk became more expensive the farther west it went, and after crossing the Himalayas and green mountains, the West became a shattered Hellenistic world created by Alexander. The three great powers: Seleucus, Antigonus, and Tomele Egypt converged in the eastern Mediterranean to the west of Syria, which was the center of the entire Hellenistic world, the so-called known world.

Silk, porcelain, armor, paper, lacquerware, and spices produced in the state of Chu had to be transported there to obtain a high price. There is indeed an artificial canal in the Gulf of Suez to the north of the Red Sea, but this is not the direction of the later Suez Canal. The canal runs south from the Red Sea, passes through the Gulf of Bit in the north, and turns west towards the Nile River in Egypt.

What kind of country Ptolemaic Egypt was, Xiong Jing knew in his heart. Rather than calling at Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, merchant ships should call at the Nabataean port of Aruba in the northeastern Red Sea.

The Red Sea is like a longhorn bull, with a head in the north and two tentacles on the head, and one in the west facing north, that is, the Gulf of Suez, which is also the Suez Canal in later generations; The eastern one faces northeast, the Gulf of Aluba, and ends at the port of Aluba. From the port of Arouba, through Petra, more than 90 kilometers to the east, you can reach the Dead Sea, and along the northeast of the Dead Sea, you can reach Damascus and the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.

Needless to say, Petra was a very prosperous place of trade, as it is often found in many Greek texts. Goods from India and Persia passed through Petra by sea in the eastern Mediterranean, and caravans on the Arabian Peninsula also passed through Petra.

Instead of passing through the Torgyptian Canal and dealing with the Ptolemaic dynasty, the merchant fleet should have docked at the port of Aruba and dealt with the merchant groups and tribes of Nabataean. Rather than docking at the port of Alubar and reaching the Eastern Mediterranean via Petra, the merchant fleet would have bypassed the Cape of Good Hope, entered the Atlantic Ocean and then entered the Mediterranean Sea from Gibraltar. Not to mention that there are Iberian horses and Syrian horses, just for several times the profit of trade, they also have to go directly to Rhodes.

The Suzaku shear, the only one that could travel so quickly to travel back and forth between the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and the southernmost tip of the Indian subcontinent in a year, not more than a year and a half, to bring back the gold and silver from the trade in the Mediterranean. Now Xiong Jing has suspended the Suzaku class, which means that the entire trade system has broken an extremely important link. There is no fast, monsoon-skipping Suzaku class, and it is estimated that it will take four years to send the gluttonous class into the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.

"Stop sailing first, and then try to strengthen the hull." Of course, Xiong Jing also knows the meaning of the Vermilion Bird level. He asked Xiang Gong Yin Dao again: "Can the iron be the rib of the keel?" ”

"Keels are fine, but ribs are not." Gong Yindao agreed last year. The keel can be pieced together piece by piece, the ribs are bent, and the processing capacity of Jutiefu is limited, only hot rolling, gas, forging, and the boring inner diameter of the steam engine, the outer circle of the artillery cutting, and the cutting of some small parts. To hammer out the bent ribs at an angle, there is no such ability.

"Not yet?" Xiong Jing was a little angry, he took out a piece of Chu paper, folded out a '凵' shape, and smoothed the white '凵' shape, shook the paper and said angrily: "Can it be an iron plate?" ”

"Yes." Gong Yin Dao didn't understand what Xiong Jing meant. However, the rolling mill of the ring-making sheet armor of the house can already roll out thin huge plates and thin copper plates used for the bottom of the charter ship.

"Can it be like this?" Xiong Jing folded the paper into a '凵' shape.

"Yes." Gong Yin Dao said again.

"If this is a huge iron, can it be wrapped around the ribs?" Xiong Jing finally asked. He also recently came up with this method, this is not a huge iron rib, this is a mixed iron rib, of course, its strength is higher than that of wood ribs.

"The minister is afraid of being iron-clad." The width of the iron plate depends on the accuracy of the roll, if the two rolls are not straight, the thickness of the iron plate will be uneven, and the larger the width, the greater the error. If you want to make a huge iron plate into a 'squint' shape and then wrap the ribs, the width of the plate should be at least 50 centimeters.

The width of the huge iron plate pierced by the house is only ten or twenty centimeters, and it is okay to make ring pieces of armor and canned food, but it is never possible to wrap ribs. If you really want to be able to pierce out fifty or sixty huge iron plates, and what kind of ring armor is there, wouldn't it be more convenient to stamp it directly into a half-body armor?